He also mentors, albeit informally, two TWG staff outside his department.

“We try and catch up for an hour every two months either in the building or offsite somewhere,” says Kennedy.

His current mentees are involved in programme delivery, so their roles “have an affinity” with the technology department. As part of the mentoring process, he acts as a sounding board for some of the projects the mentees are working on.

“It is really interesting,” he says of this experience. “It is an opportunity to provide a form of input into another part of the organisation in a unique way.

Prior to joining the Warehouse Group, Kennedy worked across the globe as a consultant, focusing on the retail sector.

After completing his degree in modern history and economics at the University of Oxford, Kennedy became a management consultant, working with Accenture and at Ernst & Young. He also worked at another consulting group, Kurt Salmon Associates, before joining Reliance, a conglomerate headquartered in India.

He has attended structured mentoring programmes at Accenture. He found the approach useful, but says it was dependent on who your mentor was.

He says TWG has frameworks around leadership development, performance management and personal growth.

“It is a strength and advantage that The Warehouse Group has the scale of multiple brands,” says Kennedy.

The group brands include The Warehouse, Noel Leeming Group, Warehouse Stationery and Torpedo7, as well as The Warehouse Group Financial Services. The Group has a Store Support Office based in Auckland, 238 retail stores as well as distribution centres throughout the country

He says with the diverse group of companies under the Warehouse Group umbrella, team members have “a range of opportunities to take some mentoring or coaching from people outside their direct area of current interest”.

“People finding different routes across different roles is something we encourage,” says Kennedy.

Many people have retail work experience as students, doing weekend or seasonal work.

“Yet, there are so many career opportunities and we want to make people aware of that,” says Kennedy. “Whether it is on the merchandising side, operations, store management and other areas such as technology or finance, there is a wide range of roles.

“It is a satisfying and rewarding place to work,” he adds. “You are connected to everyday life. Everybody shops, you don’t have to explain to people what you do, they get it.”

“It gives us a chance to help create opportunities for students coming through, to think about retail as a future career. But also have practical ways of gaining that experience in improving their skills, knowledge and desire around retail as a career.

“We hope we will see some of them choose to have their career with us.”

Kennedy says he has been a guest lecturer in retail technology at the Massey Business School for postgraduate students.

“It was a topic that included understanding how broadly technology can play a part in retail success in the functional areas,” he states.

The challenge, he adds, with a smile, is compressing all these insights into a one-and-a-half hour lecture.

He says one of the questions students asked him was how to find the right balance between the things they could do with technology and what they choose to do; and ‘potentially high risk but high reward’ versus choosing 'safe options’.

He also discussed about how care has to be taken with legislation compliance and data management. “Think about what your position is and be very clear about the ethics and values around collecting data,” he said.

“In some ways, regulation and compliance is not going to keep up with the reality of how fast the technology is moving,” he states.

“The collective role of that advisory board is to provide some input and a sounding board for the academic leadership of the programme, and help the leaders to stay in tune with the industry view of the skills and capabilities.

Simon Kennedy, The Warehouse Group

People finding different routes across different roles is something we encourage.

Simon Kennedy with his team members at The Warehouse Group: “It is great to capture insights that the current generation of students are experiencing. These insights help me understand not only what students want from a workplace so I can ensure ours is attractive, but also provides me with knowledge of what skills are coming.”

CIO New Zealand would like to hear from other business technology executives working with advisory groups for academic organisations, or mentoring future ICT leaders. Email the editor divina_paredes@idg.co.nz

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